Saturday, April 28, 2012

THE RAIN HAD JUST STOPPED in the little eastern Kansas town of Osawatomie when thirty thousand people, gathered in an atmosphere not unlike that of a country fair, fell quiet. Their hero, former president Teddy Roosevelt, climbed atop a kitchen table and began to speak in a high, almost falsetto voice, orating amid cheering for ninety minutes. When finished, he had delivered the most controversial and influential address of his career, in which he described a radical new program that was both denounced and celebrated in newspapers across the country. The date was August 31, 1910.

The New Nationalism Speech, as it came to be known, emphasized conservation, as did most of Roosevelt’s speeches written by his friend Gifford Pinchot, who had been his conservation chief for the two terms of his presidency. But it also newly placed the “moral issue” and “patriotic duty” of conservation into the context of a racial conversation, as well as a much broadened concept of progressivism.In appealing to the folks in Osawatomie, Roosevelt went well beyond the program he had pursued in office, proposing a powerful national government strong enough to address many of its citizens’ problems. In this new regime, government would be a general antidote to corporate power. Federal programs would control wages and hours, health, and corporate governance. The government would take over utilities and railroads if necessary to stop monopolies. Corporate political contributions would be limited and publicly reported. Most radically, this vastly empowered national government would transform America’s economy to reward only merit, using graduated estate and income taxes to pull down the fortunes of the very rich.

The states that originally ratified the Constitution had faced none of these problems and never consented to a national government strong enough to solve them, but once corporations could span the nation—and Roosevelt viewed corporate combination as an inevitable consequence of the industrial age—then only a central authority even mightier than they could prevent a few rich men from controlling the country’s laws, natural resources, and workers’ lives. Corporations already did control much of that, and the workers weren’t going to stand for it.

Nineteenth-century laws essentially gave away natural resources to the first to find them, allowing the rich to privatize immense new wealth in oil, coal, minerals, and hydropower at close to zero cost. Business interests exploited workers with as little government interference, creating grim servitude in western mining towns that would sometimes flash into violence.

Roosevelt’s New Nationalism offered federal power to manage the economy and tame the exploitation of people and resources. Instead of class conflict, all would join as equals in allegiance to a shared national identity stronger than the old links to community or state.

Americans had to learn nationalism—flag worship and the pledge of allegiance were promulgated in that era, too. The federal government at the time didn’t seem equal to many tasks. Back in 1889, when Gifford Pinchot was a young man exploring the idea of going into forestry, a recently retired secretary of agriculture, George Loring, told him forest management would never work in America because the country lacked “a centralized monarchial authority.”

Later that same year, Pinchot attended the Paris International Exposition, at the site of the brand new Eiffel Tower, where he felt deeply impressed and inspired by the immense forestry exhibit. The great world’s fairs were society’s premier tool for acculturating its people to the new, as Robert W. Rydell reports in his fascinating book All the World’s a Fair. Not only did they promote amazing technology, they also demonstrated the new relationships among people that the machines brought about, including affiliation with the symbols of national rather than community identity—monuments, mass communication and transportation, mass-produced goods, and celebrity. Contemporaries believed the fairs reduced class strife and political violence. In the United States, each fair attracted a substantial fraction of the entire population, and those who couldn’t attend read saturation coverage in the press. At the world’s fairs, civic leaders produced self-contained models of a hoped-for future in order to mold ideal citizens to live in it.

The utopia exhibited at the expositions held on American soil included and eventually drew a connection between the richness of the country’s natural resources and the superiority of its dominant race. The first American world’s fair, held in Philadelphia in 1876 to commemorate the nation’s centennial, presented Native Americans as hideous brutes fit for extinction—a message justifying that year’s warfare against the indigenous people of the Great Plains, including the Battle of the Little Bighorn. At the New Orleans world’s fair in 1885, comparative displays of skulls showed how Indians, Eskimos, and other “lower” races resembled criminals or animals. The enormous fair in Chicago in 1893 displayed living American Indians and other indigenous people on a honky-tonk midway where they were continuously jeered and ridiculed. Anthropologists arranged the races along the walk in a supposedly evolutionary progression from the lowest to the best, at which point viewers emerged from the noise and chaos of the carnival into the quiet of a pristine new city, built for the purpose on an immense scale and painted pure white. The symbolism conveyed an idea of evolutionary ethics wherein white Americans could grow through racial purification from an animalistic, selfish nature to become higher, more cooperative beings.

These ideas had been developed at Ivy League and other universities, at museums of natural history and anthropology in New York and Washington, in learned societies and in scientific literature. When subsequent world’s fairs focused on the West, the link between natural resources, morality, and racism was drawn ever more explicitly. The great Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis came in 1904, a critical time for the West as Roosevelt’s conservation program hit its stride. Westerners sent pieces of the landscape to demonstrate its value: for example, from California part of the trunk of a giant sequoia, and from Alaska, ancestral totem poles removed from coastal villages. They sent live people, too. The mastermind of the fair’s anthropology department promised to “represent human progress from the dark prime to the highest enlightenment, from savagery to civic organization, from egoism to altruism. . . . The method will be to use living peoples in their accustomed avocations as our great object lesson.”

Authorities shipped to St. Louis indigenous people from Alaska and the Philippines, pygmies from Africa and giants from Patagonia, and many famous Native Americans, as well; my grandmother, age seven, encountered Geronimo there, a pathetic figure in an Apache chief’s regalia displayed on a platform. Given ten cents by her mother, she paid him for his autograph, which he painfully scratched in block letters on an index card, whereupon Geronimo took her dime to another booth for a piece of apple pie. Roosevelt and his daughter Alice (whom my grandmother also met at the fair) toured approvingly, the president having sent word ahead via William Howard Taft, then secretary of war, to have the Filipino savages dressed in properly modest clothing (they wore bright silk trousers until the fair’s Board of ?Lady Managers certified loincloths as acceptable and more in keeping with the exhibit’s authenticity). Native people camped out for display according to a plan designed to show the relationship of their racial types. Scientists extensively measured and tested these people while exhibiting them—their physical size, senses, abilities, intelligence—all of which, apparently, proved the superiority of whites. Some human specimens who died were sent for dissection; the brains of three Filipinos were collected by the Smithsonian.

By the time of the San Francisco fair in 1915, the racists had shifted focus from justifying white conquest over other races to efficiently using the natural resources the dominant culture had thereby obtained. As gardeners and foresters would thin weak genetic strains and nurture the strong, so eugenic campaigners called for planned racial improvement through sterilization of people deemed inferior, beginning with anyone with a disability, and encouraged breeding by the racially superior. In War Against the Weak, Edwin Black describes how the U.S. Department of Agriculture encouraged the formation of an American Breeding Association that included research on humans, with funding and support from the Carnegie Institution, the Harriman railroad fortune, and the founders of the Kellogg cereal company, among others. The former president of Stanford University convened the Second National Conference on Race Betterment at the San Francisco fair, and the Race Betterment Foundation mounted an exhibit, with pictures of its illustrious supporters, including Harvard University president Charles Eliot and Gifford Pinchot.

Pinchot had entered the eugenics movement during the Roosevelt administration, joining several of the president’s other friends. He solicited contributions from scientists and social activists advocating eugenics for a three-volume National Conservation Commission report to the president at the end of his term in 1909. Roosevelt transmitted the report to Congress with the statement that it was “one of the most fundamentally important documents ever laid before the American people.”

The report’s volume on “National Vitality, Its Waste and Conservation,” by a friend of Pinchot’s, Yale economist Irving Fisher, reads like a manifesto of the progressive political movement that Roosevelt sought to lead, and its words were echoed in the New Nationalism speech the following year. Ten multifaceted recommendations called for a national administration of public health; an end to air and water pollution; food and restaurant inspection; worker safety and child labor regulation; working hour restrictions; health and safety inspection of prisons, asylums, factories, and schools; antidrug and -alcohol laws; safe drinking water; enforcement of antispitting laws; improved sewage and garbage removal; pest control; building safety inspection; school nurses and health instruction; universal athletic training; healthful changes in clothing, architecture, ventilation, food preparation, and sexual hygiene; elimination of poverty, vice, and crime. And then, recommendation ten: “eugenics, or hygiene for future generations,” with forced sterilization or marriage prohibition for people with epilepsy or mental disabilities, and for criminals, the poor, and “degenerates generally.” The report called for the creation of a new social norm benefiting eugenically favored marriages, making “degenerate” marriages as taboo as incest. “The problem of the conservation of our natural resources is therefore not a series of independent problems, but a coherent, all-embracing whole,” it concluded. “If our nation cares to make any provision for its grandchildren and its grandchildren’s grandchildren, this provision must include conservation in all its branches—but above all, the conservation of the racial stock itself.”

More than a dozen legislatures passed eugenic laws over the next ten years, which, by 1970, had authorized forced sterilization of sixty-four thousand Americans with mental illnesses, epilepsy, disabilities, or criminal records, or who were simply poor. At least thirty states passed laws forbidding marriage of eugenically unfit men and women and twenty-eight outlawed interracial marriages, including six that put antimiscegenation in their constitutions. Those marriage laws stood until 1967, when a Virginia couple, Richard and Mildred Loving, validated their marriage before the U.S. Supreme Court—after a county sheriff had burst into their bedroom with a flashlight and arrested them, despite a District of Columbia marriage certificate hanging on the wall. Four states also prohibited sexual relations between Native Americans and whites.

Roosevelt was worried about the loss of a special American quality of strength and ingenuity that supposedly had evolved among whites on the frontier. As eastern European and Jewish immigrants flooded into the country with their big families, and with the birthrates of white Protestant Americans declining, he warned of impending “race suicide.” Roosevelt’s ideal American family lived on a farm with six white children—and less procreation represented a failure of patriotism and a moral flaw, a rejection of the basic responsibilities instilled in men and women by nature. He dispatched Pinchot to study the problem with the Country Life Commission. Continuing that work, the American Eugenics Society, one of various such organizations to which Pinchot belonged, sponsored hundreds of Fitter Family contests at rural fairs, wherein couples would take intelligence and physical tests and submit to medical exams to become certified as worthy for breeding.

Roosevelt wrote, “I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding; and when the evil nature of these people is sufficiently flagrant, this should be done. Criminals should be sterilized, and feebleminded persons forbidden to leave offspring behind them. But as yet there is no way possible to devise which could prevent all undesirable people from breeding. The emphasis should be laid on getting desirable people to breed.”

HOW DO WE MAKE SENSE of this behavior? How could progressives who worked for conservation, national health insurance, and the rights of workers adopt an ideology of hatred against the weak?

In some ways, the inconsistencies reflect the diversity of a temporary political coalition. A lot of money and establishment power backed the eugenics supporters—a list that included John Kellogg, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Andrew Carnegie, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Alexander Graham Bell, and many eminent anthropologists, psychologists, and biologists, including the founder of the movement, Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwin’s cousin. Joining with them was smart politics. Roosevelt wanted women to stay home with large families; Margaret Sanger, the mother of Planned Parenthood, wanted smaller families and gender equality—but both were involved with the eugenics movement. A desire for power is hardly an excuse, however, especially for powerful opinion leaders such as Roosevelt and Pinchot, who constantly invoked moral authority for their policies.

Another excuse: Roosevelt and Pinchot believed in science and expertise, and eugenics seemed scientific. The idea that the races are fundamentally different came from the creator of taxonomy himself, Carl Linnaeus, who in 1735 categorized human beings as white, black, red, yellow, or wild (Homo sapiens ferus). In the 1850s, before the rise of eugenics, according to Sven Lindqvist in his book “Exterminate All the Brutes,” some European scientists declared the “inferior races” naturally destined for extinction, and reasoned that helping that process along could only be moral. While the true superiority of European colonial armies lay in their weaponry, not their genes or culture, this ideology promoted genocidal slaughter of people in Africa, South America, the South Pacific, and Asia, and the theft of land from the victims. Charles Darwin witnessed this kind of warfare in South America and abhorred it, but nonetheless toyed with the idea of evolutionary differences between races. Darwin’s followers extended his theories to identify racial heredity as the cause of crime and immorality, and thus to justify genocide as a way of cleansing the gene pool of vice.

The flaws in these theories were evident in Roosevelt’s day. The eugenicists’ own work supporting genetic claims of racial differences was flimsy and unsubstantiated. G. K. Chesterton, Clarence Darrow, H. L. Mencken, and other less famous writers grasped the errors and pointed them out. Pinchot’s own conservation commission report, in the volume written by Fisher, contained statements an intelligent person should have seen through, such as those that blamed the demise of American Indians and Hawaiian Islanders on their own sexual immorality—rather than the government-sanctioned violence and theft of land justified by the racists’ own theories.

Madison Grant, the founder of the Bronx Zoo and a groundbreaking conservationist, wrote one of the most influential eugenics books, The Passing of the Great Race, which would be laughable if it weren’t so revolting. In pseudoscientific language, Grant denies the very right to life of members of other races, using as evidence nothing more than his own prejudiced stereotypes. In Grant’s final analysis, white Americans were not racist enough: “They lack the instinct of self-preservation in a racial sense. Unless such an instinct develops their race will perish, as do all organisms which disregard this primary law of nature.”

This goal of creating a more racist society informed much of the cultural work of the institutions led by Roosevelt and Pinchot’s peers—not only the world’s fairs but the American Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian, and others. Grant was an influential friend to the president and phrases and ideas from his writing crept into Roosevelt’s. Oddly, the improvement of the dominant race meshed with the New Nationalism’s utopia of a merit-based society. Without money or class to distinguish them, the sexual attraction between men and women would be guided only by natural selection. Those unbiased choices would automatically sort mates by the proper eugenic criteria, matching the best to the best—white to white, intelligent to intelligent, and so on. That this absurd notion was considered a basis for social policy reveals the extent of the collectivism envisioned in Pinchot’s brave new world.

The program Roosevelt advanced in his New Nationalism speech called for a stronger sense of national affiliation than ever before, a feeling of membership powerful enough to allow the federal government to regulate daily life, to curtail use of resources in favor of the future, and to redistribute income and inheritance to create economic equality. He asked for cooperation on a grand scale. In theory, the idea makes sense that racism could glue together a national identity capable of incorporating the rest of progressivism. To buttress a group’s willingness to cooperate, enhance the members’ sense of belonging and their hostility toward nonmembers—teach them that they’re special, superior, and under threat. Bind together an American majority by equating its white racial dominance with Americanism.

I’m not saying Pinchot or Roosevelt schemed dishonestly to increase American racism. Roosevelt’s philosophy could be inconsistent—he also spoke eloquently of the ability of nationalism to transcend race. The evidence suggests that Pinchot and Roosevelt rode along with the eugenicists rather than led their movement. But eugenic ideas slid frictionlessly into Pinchot’s worldview, a rigidly moralistic construct of conservation, efficiency, and merit. And that construct of ideas worked politically, for a while.

Eugenics thrived in America until discredited by the revelation of the Nazi death camps it had helped inspire. Grant’s book particularly incited Hitler, who wrote him a fan letter calling it his “Bible” before inscribing its hatred upon the flesh of millions of people. (The same Nazi officials who slaughtered human beings in death camps also passed some of the world’s most advanced legislation to protect the environment and endangered species, even outlawing cruelty to animals, including the sort of medical experimentation they performed on their human victims.) World War II’s horrors saved our country from going farther down the eugenic path, but Roosevelt died before that happened, and Pinchot’s life carried him in a new direction. By the 1930s Pinchot had become a champion of the poor and admirer of indigenous cultures, and he spoke out early against German anti-Semitism.

But words live on without their authors. The concepts of eugenics are far from dead today, as a quick Internet search will reveal. There’s a hangover for conservation, too. The American environmental movement remains predominantly white and middle class, detached from minorities, immigrants, and the poor along the same lines of class and color that existed a century ago. We’re liberal and say the right things, but in the 1980s and ’90s, mainstream environmental organizations debated opposition to immigration, using arguments that differed in little but terminology from those eugenicists would have used. More broadly, our political language for protecting the environment is about conflict between forces of good and evil, the fear of annihilation, and the exaltation of purity. It’s the language of war, with dark undertones of racism we’ve inherited but no longer recognize.

Garrett Hardin’s 1968 paper “The Tragedy of the Commons,” describing the grim fate faced by unmanaged natural resources such as open-access fisheries, influenced a generation of environmental thinking with its perspective that only a powerful, coercive state could save greedy people from themselves. But Hardin’s real concern was the doomsday prediction of Third World population growth (a prediction that has proven overblown and simplistic). In the 1970s he opposed humanitarian aid to poor countries, hoping to stop their population increases through starvation and disease, and opposed immigration to preserve America as an island of wealth and environmental quality. Hardin believed compassion was a weakness that was bound to be eliminated by natural selection.

In the 1980s, Hardin’s writings helped form an anti-immigration branch of the environmental movement, which shared many members with organizations that advocated for laws requiring the use of English only. Enough environmentalists shared this point of view to bring about a highly publicized national vote by members of the Sierra Club to oppose immigration in 1998. The proposal failed, but the existence of the debate suggests the durability of the links between racism, nationalism, and conservation. The connections don’t by themselves undercut calls for conservation or implicate anyone as prejudiced simply for wanting to protect nature. But they do illuminate the ethical hazards that come with the kind of power Roosevelt sought to accomplish his goals. Without justice and equality, conservation can become, rather than an intrinsic good, a part of a greater evil.

IT WAS IN AN IMPROBABLE PLACE that I first learned about these troubling connections. I was attending a cultural heritage week in a tiny Alaska Native village in Prince William Sound doing research for my book The Fate of Nature. In a garage, a carver and counselor from the village of Port Graham, Jim Miller, was teaching teens to work with wood, leaning over his knife in a folding metal chair while chatting about the meaning of their Chugach culture.

Miller brought up the Nazis in one of our first conversations. He didn’t distinguish between Nazi genocide and the genocide against Native Americans. In the eugenicists’ world, Jews and Eskimos each were merely a lower rung—writing in 1915, Henry Fairfield Osborn, an influential president of the American Museum of Natural History, used the supposed impossibility of educating Eskimos as a basis of his scientific argument that northern Europeans represented a higher step in evolution. Jim struggles against this ideology every time he consults photographs of traditional art to inform his carving; anthropologists stripped the region of the originals a century ago and took them to big city museums. Jim also encounters this ideology in his counseling practice, with men and women who have internalized the lessons of inferiority and carry on the oppression against themselves, through depression, self-destructive anger, and alcohol abuse. Miller believes community healing depends on reclaiming personal value.

The racists remain his adversary every day, even in the village clinic where Jim works and where we later talked about eugenics. “We think that’s history,” he said, “but what’s the trickle-down? In this building there is very free and easy access to birth control. Any type of birth control you can imagine, and if you still find yourself pregnant, there is free abortion. There’s no polite way to say it—to cut down on breeding. It’s not just accessible, it’s promoted. Kill your baby. And when you talk about values changing, when you no longer see your children as a blessing, that is some really bad stuff.”

I felt uncomfortable. I support free birth control and legal abortion. I had to stop and think. It’s true the eugenicists debated how to promote family planning among the inferior but not the dominant races. It’s true free family planning services often focus on poor and minority communities. Historians have documented—as neither Jim nor I then knew—that some of today’s major organizations for population control grew directly from the eugenics movement, like branches on a family tree. As Jonathan Peter Spiro points out in his chilling book Defending the Master Race, “the organizers of Planned Parenthood, the Population Reference Bureau, and the Population Association of America were all former eugenicists. Similarly, the first director of the Population Council (the organization funded by John D. Rockefeller III to promote family planning in the Third World) was eugenicist Frederick Osborn.”

Good motives inspired this population-control work—to save nature and improve human existence. But the eugenicists had precisely the same motives. I wouldn’t charge family planning advocates with racism, but I’m not a victim of genocide. Victims shouldn’t have to analyze the motives of their oppressors. Once our scientists and philanthropists unleashed this monstrous hatred, it lived and transmuted uncontrolled, deforming society itself, and now, somehow, the descendants of slaves and displaced Indians are partly responsible for our redemption—by forgiving us and by loving themselves.

Many Alaska Natives remain hostile to environmentalists, despite often sharing their goals. Some environmentalists’ elitism, purism, and good-versus-evil worldviews still reflect the attitudes of their intellectual ancestors. Norms live in the culture like genes, manifesting themselves unexpectedly, the way a child’s big ears appear from an ancestor of whom no picture or name remains. We’ve forgotten the fathers of eugenics, but not their moral tone, as pure knights of conservation fighting the corrupt and degenerate wasters of nature.

Roosevelt’s New Nationalism speech helped introduce that rhetoric, with language that has not lost its inspirational ring:

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.

But the politics of division can’t help the Earth now. Nature is endangered by threats that come from no specific villain or location. The oceans grow warmer and more acidic, marine mammals are contaminated, dead zones spread, plastic debris flips from wave tops to beaches and into the guts of birds. No one is innocent.

Categories won’t help us—nation, race, good, and evil—for they have little to do with humanity’s need to fit within a global ecological niche. Power won’t help us either. Power itself is a good deal of the problem, as coercion divides the people who must ultimately work together. Besides, the powerful have never instigated the kind of social transformation we now require. The solution has to come up from the people, through persuasion, enlightenment, and the creation of new norms, until the powerful are swept irresistibly along in the new social reality. This is a better job for the weak, who often have more at stake in the loss of nature, a closer relationship to its gifts, and a greater capacity to recognize when a certain level of material wealth is enough.

Understanding the history of racism in the conservation movement is important, not to assign blame, but to diagnose our unhealthy relationships with each other and with nature, learn from our mistakes, and begin cooperating in the ways that we must in order to reverse our destruction of the Earth’s ecosystems.

Although no big surprise for those who have familiarised themselves with the subject, the conclusions of a recently published book on prince Bernhard’s activities should work like a hot cup of coffee for the drowsy and intoxicated.

In the past week the publication ‘the prince can sell me more nonsense’ (as of yet not translated to English) gained some Dutch mainstream media attention. Author and historian Gerard Aalders, senior researcher at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, has enveloped himself in research concerning Bilderberg-founder Bernhard von Lippe-Biesterfeld. He emerges with some sobering conclusions about the German prince and his international dealings. A bitter pill to swallow for those who are in the habit of surrendering their will to royal bloodlines. In an interview with the Dutch Quote magazine on April 3, Aalders elaborates on the necessity of his book:‘This is the indispensable counterbalance to all those welcome stories about prince Bernhard. (…). This book covers not even 10 percent of the nastiness surrounding Bernhard. The rest is locked up safely behind closed doors. There are many icebergs under as many tips.’

Although there is some sense in the general public of what the prince was up to, he is usually characterised as a somewhat corrupt but nevertheless lovable scoundrel. Aalders asks himself:

‘How does a man who lies, scams, accepts bribes, cheats on his wife, serves only his own interests, consorts with unreliable individuals, arms deals, corrupts ministers, continuously spreads false stories about himself, remain so extremely popular for so long?’

A just question. Although Bernhard was compromised by a famous bribing scandal in 1976 (the so-called Lockheed affair), it has been thoroughly watered down throughout the second half of the 20th century by constant reinforcement of a mythical Bernhard who supposedly fought the Nazi’s from his hideout in London during the war. As so often is the case, the propaganda bears little resemblance to the truth.

Bernhard, himself a Nazi in the 1930s, had formally denounced National Socialism in order to work his way up the Dutch (which means German) royal hierarchy. But his loudly proclaimed rejection of Hitler did not mean he disapproved of his methods- as the prince energetically presided over illegal transport of Nazi’s to South America in 1945.

In a certain sense he did denounce classic Nazism, for Bernhard realized very early on that it wouldn’t do to side with the Nazi’s in the long run, as they were destined to be crushed between the two rising giants, the United States and Soviet Union: the world’s foremost future management teams. After the war, the German prince took up his place at the table of the board of directors and assumed the role of chairman of the first Bilderberg-conference in 1954. After being asked what the most remarkable new revelations in his book are, Gerard Aalders sums up the most striking:

‘The financial network that Bernhard broached through the Bilderberg-conferences.’, ‘He was deeply involved in weapons trade. The Lockheed bribing scandal is notorious, but he also had dealings with Northrop and Agusta.’

As Aalders’ research shows, the above mentioned corporations are top arms manufacturers with extensive ties to the annual Bilderberg-meetings. Aalders also mentions Berhard’s frequent business trips to Argentina in the 1950s, where the prince managed to arrange a huge railroad contract for the Dutch corporation Werkspoor after both receiving and handing out all kinds of kingly gifts.

Besides huge amounts of money used to pay off the fascist Argentinean command, Evita Peron insisted on being rewarded with some Dutch honorary medal to seal the deal (while singing to the Argentineans, not to cry for her). But the prince’s ambitions did not end with Latin America. His gaze wandered eastward to that other, easily subdued continent- Africa.

Here was a honey pot of immense proportions for the Prussian bear to grope. To get his hands on the natural resources of the continent, Bernhard set up a dummy corporation to steak out the grounds. Its name was the 1001 club and its signboard was painted up with the brightest and noblest colours imaginable. Under the guise of environmentalism the 1001 club was born in 1970 with the aim of raising funds for the World Wildlife Fund (of which prince Bernhard was the first chairman, and top-eugenicist Julian Huxley was the founding father). Aalders comments on the members of the exclusive club in a recently aired news item on Dutch national television:

‘I can’t name all thousand of them, but they were people with a very nasty reputation. The members of this club in their own way had a vested interest to maintain good relations with all kinds of nations in the third world. Especially nations with all kinds of precious resources like oil, gold, diamantes – those kinds of things.’

According to the website of the World Wildlife Fund (currently known as the World Wide Fund for Nature), the club aspired to ‘stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment, and building a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.’ Decoding the Orwellian cryptics, it simply means ‘to confiscate the planet’s natural resources and conduct eugenics with perfect impunity’. Members of this club? To name the most prominent: the British and French branches of the Rothschild genealogy, David Rockefeller and two of his brothers, king Juan Carlos of Spain, the British Petroleum representative Eric Drake, a plethora of European dukes and princes, viscounts and lords, and (to end on a curious note) sheikh Salem Bin Laden.

A true convergence of criminals to be sure. Their game was diabolically simple and effective. Loans were extended to third world nations with very reasonable interest rates on the condition that the loan sharks got to plant their teeth within their borders and suck out the natural resources.

Thanks to the controlled media, facts about the prince have taken their sweet time in coming to light. To prevent waiting another five decades for more information to come out about the current new world order chieftains, it is vitally important to expose their final goals by uncloaking the many pretexts through which they mean to accomplish them. Pillaging nations and imploding economies in the name of the environment remain the favorite activities of the global elite. Like the plundered third world nations, the first world will soon find out that accepting loans from the new world order means certain and lifelong enslavement.

In an episode of the television program Zembla that aired last week on Dutch national television, Pieter van Vollenhoven- queen Beatrix’s brother-in-law- called for forced birth control for people with drug addiction, psychiatric patients and other people deemed unfit to reproduce.photoQueen Beatrix and her brother-in-law, Pieter van Vollenhoven.

As head of the Dutch Safety Board, Van Vollenhoven investigated several cases in which children were abused at a young age. After concluding that “the government is not sufficiently capable of delivering on its responsibility to ensure the safety of young children in the age group 0 to 12 within the home”, Van Vollenhoven went on to propose a classical eugenic solution:“People will accuse me of going too far. But to be honest, that’s an easy thing to say if you do not know the facts. My eyes have been opened by seeing these problems. They came as a shock. You can see that these parents need help, since they’ve no control over their own lives. When it’s clear that’s the case, perhaps contraception would be the best step.”

Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports that in his call for mandatory birth control for the “unfit”:

“Mr Van Vollenhoven has the support of experts from the Netherlands’ Child Protection Agency and the mental health care sector.”

Sure he does. We see many academics, including so-called ethicists, completely on board with the eugenic practice- which appears to make a come-back in recent days.

In a reaction to Van Vollenhoven’s statements, director of the Child Protection Agency in Amsterdam explains why he’s in full agreement:

“In some cases, these parents have already demonstrated once or twice that they are not capable of looking after their children, with all the terrible consequences that this entails. If you keep on giving these parents another chance, you are basically condoning child abuse.”

Of course we know all too well that if the scientific community gets its way, the day is not far off that “climate skepticism” will soon be a psychiatric condition that requires treatment and possibly mandatory contraception or sterilization. One can always find horrible cases to use as pretexts in order to reintroduce the same old eugenic laws. And, as the UN and its royal masters know, they can always find people willing to do everything in order to “save the planet”. The following clip from a 2009 UNICEF conference Uniting the Children” shows a brainwashed 17 year old student literally stating:

“We as the world’s children want to be able to look forward to a cleaner, brighter, greener future, and are prepared to whatever it takes.” (from 50 seconds onward):

It’s frightening to see a revival in calls for the population to be culled. We are witnessing the globalists going all out in recent months, calling for population reduction in the name of the environment. In the case of Van Vollenhoven eugenics is being propagated in the name of “child abuse”. Other favorites of the elite are “poverty” and “deforestation”. It has been extensively documented that royalty has traditionally been in the business of eugenics from the moment of its very conception. Throughout the ages overlords, themselves products of interbreeding, have engaged in mass-murder and eugenic practices worldwide. In 1984 Prince Philip gave us a glimpse into the eugenic mindset of the interbred ruling elite festering all over Europe:

Friday, April 27, 2012

GENESIS Investment Bank could be saved from closure at the eleventh hour amid indications it has secured a new investor a few days before the central bank was about to follow through on its threat to close undercapitalised banks. March 31 was the deadline.

Sources told the Zimbabwe Independent this week the Reserve Bank was on the verge of closing the struggling financial institution when a new investor came in.Although the identity of the investor remained shrouded in secrecy at the time of publishing, British tycoon Nicholas Van Hoogstraten and wealthy businessman Frank Buyanga have been linked to the deal.

Buyanga, however, denied rescuing Genesis, saying he had only held talks with the bank with a view to investing in it but the negotiations collapsed. Van Hoogstraten was not available for comment.

Buyanga and van Hoogstraten have previously been linked to micro-finance institution Hamilton Finance, which made headlines last year for controversially selling properties that had been lodged as security by borrowers.

In his monetary policy statement presentation end of January, Reserve Bank governor Gideon Gono gave undercapitalised banks a two-month ultimatum to comply or face closure. Gono said there would be no further extensions after the March 31 deadline.

Gono proposed that banks which did not meet the regulatory minimum capital requirements –– US$12,5 million for commercial banks and US$10 million for merchant banks –– should consider mergers.

The central bank governor was not available for comment at the time of going to print. But last month he said Genesis had negative capital of US$3,2 million and was in negotiations with Swiss Charge of Zambia and a consortium of local investors to inject US$20 million as capital but the deal failed.

A consortium of investors led by FMB of Malawi previously tried to take over Genesis but this was also inconclusive.

As of December 2011, 20 out 25 banks had met the minimum capital requirements.

ZABG, which had a negative capital of US$15,35 million and Royal Bank with US$3,42 million only managed to meet the threshold early this month. New investors have since taken over ZABG. - (Zimbabwe Independent)

President Sata implores Zambians in diaspora to help develop the countryTIME PUBLISHED - Friday, April 27, 2012, 1:49 pm

President Michael Sata has urged Zambians in the diaspora to come back home and explore the job opportunities available in the country and to contribute to the development of the country.

President Sata has also assured Zambians that his government’s promise of creating employment opportunities in strategic areas of the economy will be delivered. The President was speaking last evening at a cocktail when he met Zambians living in Zimbabwe at the High Commissioners residence in Harare.And President Sata has urged Zambians leaving in Zimbabwe to be ambassadors of the country by making meaningful contributions to the economy of the host country.

At the same function, President Sata introduced Zambia’s first Home Affairs Minister Aaron Milner who is now resident in Zimbabwe.

Mr Milner said the election of President Sata has turned a new page for Zambians and the future of the country because of his resolve to stir the country to higher levels of economic development.

He commended President Sata for his firm stance against corruption and urged Zambians to give him and the PF government the support required to fight the scourge if the country is to develop.

Meanwhile, Zambians living in Zambia have been assured of government support to help them obtain national registration identities.

Zambia’s High Commissioner to Zimbabwe Ndiyoyi Mutiti says the embassy is ready to assist Zambians that are ready and willing to go back home by helping them obtain passports and citizenship documents.

The High Commissioner was responding to questions raised by some Zambians living in Zimbabwe over the procedures to follow when acquiring passports and citizenship documents.

And in a vote of thanks, a representative of Zambians living in Zimbabwe, Yvonne Chibiya said Zambians living in Zimbabwe were proud of the stability and economic development that the country has recorded in the recent past.

Mrs Chibiya said as Zambians in the diaspora are committed to making a meaningful contribution to the discourse of development back home.

Meanwhile, President Sata and his entourage have left Harare for Bulawayo.

The President will officially open the 53rd Zimbabwe international Trade Fair later in the day before returning to Lusaka.

He is accompanied by the First lady Dr Christine Kaseba – Sata, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Tourism Given Lubinda, Special Assistant to the President for Press and Public Relations George Chellah, and Zambia’s High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, Ndiyoyi Mutiti.

PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe wife, Grace is set to commission major upgrades at her “state of the art” Gushungo Dairy Project, state media reported Thursday. The facility, which boats a 1,300 herd of cattle, producing about 8 000 litres of milk per day is set to be commissioned next month, according to ZBC radio.

Mugabe took her Zambia counterpart, Dr Christine Kaseba on a tour of the farm on Thursday. Dr Kaseba is in Zimbabwe accompanying husband, President Michael Sata on a state visit. Sata was due to officially open the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) in Bulawayo on Friday.Gushungo Dairy was at the centre of a media storm in 2009 when global foods giant Nestle ordered its Zimbabwe unit to stop buying milk from the farm.

The move came after human rights groups called for a world-wide boycott of the Swiss multinational’s products over its links with the Mugabes.

However, Zanu PF officials reacted angrily to the development forcing the temporary closure of the local factory with the company accusing government officials and police of trying to force staff to accept milk deliveries.

Youth Empowerment and Indigenisation Minister, Saviour Kasukuwere and his Agriculture counterpart, Joseph Made visited the firm and accused senior executives of “imposing sanctions” on local suppliers.

Operations only resumed in January 2010 after a deal was reached under which Gushungo would make its deliveries to a national pool from which Nestle then sourced its requirements.

Meanwhile, Dr Kaseba also visited the Grace Mugabe Children’s Home in Mazowe valley along with several other projects the First Lady is carrying out in the area.

Strapping one of the facility’s children on her back, Mugabe took her counterpart on tour of the facility which comprises over 30 modern houses, all at different stages of completion. Some 24 orphaned children already live in three houses that have already been completed.

Work is also continuing on the Grace Mugabe Primary School with up to 1000 students expected to be enrolled when it is completed in December this year.

COMMENT - This is a blatant example of MDC corruption in action. Just like in Zambia 21 years ago, no matter how corrupt people thought UNIP was, it was incomparable to the corruption of the MMD under Frederick Chiluba. Once you have a neoliberal party that doesn't believe in government because it worships 'free markets', don't expect good governance. In fact, expect abuse of office and official funds.

BULAWAYO was in the throes of a major health crisis on Thursday as President Robert Mugabe and his Zambian counterpart Michael Sata arrived for the official opening of the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair. A four-day strike by 2,300 council workers over outstanding salaries had paralysed most services.

Mayor Thaba Moyo stepped in to handle the talks with unions late Thursday, but the talks appeared to have failed. Clinics remained closed, burst water pipes had cut supplies to at least four suburbs and rubbish heaps were piling up around the city – all in the middle of the country’s premier business exhibition.The MDC-T run Bulawayo council has not paid workers for two months, and unions say the February salaries – the last time staff was paid – were slashed by 40 percent without notice.

“I don’t want to call this a strike. People have gathered at the council offices looking for their money. If they pay us now, we will leave here and go to work,” said Moses Mahlangu, the secretary general of the Zimbabwe Urban Councils Workers’ Union.

He added: “What we have had so far are demands for council workers to go back to work. How will they collect rubbish when they are hungry? How do they work hungry?“The council says there is no money. When your father says he has no money, his actions should show that.

“Now, you have heard that they bought over 20 cars for top management including the mayor, and they are still buying. Council staff is unpaid but people are buying cars.

“We are not asking for luxury. We are talking of students who have been sent back from school because they have not paid fees; we are talking of lodgers who have been thrown out because they can’t pay rent… we are talking about sick people who are sleeping outside in this cold.”

Since Monday, the workers have been gathering everyday on the lawn at the Tower Block building which houses council offices. A bank has threatened to seize the building over a US$5 million debt.

Several suburbs including Paddonhurst, Sunnyside, North End, Tegela and Romney Park have been without water for three days after a water pipe burst.

Garbage was also collecting in several parts of the city centre, mainly the Basch Street Terminus commonly known as Egodini, Lobengula Street and the market place along 5th Avenue between Robert Mugabe Way and George Silundika Street.

Some council officials have accused the workers of using the Trade Fair to “blackmail” and “embarrass” the local authority. Mahlangu rejects the criticism.

“Us being here to ask for our money has nothing to do with the Trade Fair,” he said.

“We get paid on the 21st day of every month. What we have here is akin to a situation where someone who owes you money decides the terms of when you can claim it, and even withholds some of your money and still expects you to be grateful and obedient.”

Mugabe and Sata arrived in the city on Thursday ahead of the official opening of the annual exhibition on Friday.

With nearly 200,000 people expected to visit the Trade Fair grounds by Saturday night, council bosses are desperate to end the work boycott before a full-scale crisis.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

COMMENT - Tolling South Africa's roads. Welcome to privatisation. Also, the Freeth and Campbell's lying lawyer, Jeremy Gauntlett, (Mugabe And The White African) works for the South African Treasury! If the MDC wins, Anglo-American, the largest corporation on the SA stock exchange, is going to own 20% of the world's known diamond reserves after privatisation, a definite boon for the SA Treasury. Gee, another fact they didn't mention in their Economist Magazine funded hitjob. (UPDATE May 2, 2012: Jeremy Gauntlett has more recently defended Wal-Mart and Massmart against the South African government.)

The Congress of South African Trade Unions and the ANC will ask Cabinet to postpone implementation of the e-tolls for a month. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi tweeted late on Thursday afternoon, "ANC and Cosatu leadership agreed to postpone etolls by month to allow task team more time to explore alternative funding."

Cosatu spokesperson Patrick Craven told the Mail & Guardian: "A decision has been made to ask government to postpone the e-tolls for a month to allow more time for the task team looking for alternative funding [for the tolls] to continue their work."The ANC said: "The leadership has collectively agreed to postpone the implementation of the e-toll collection system by a month. This will give the task team more time to explore alternative funding mechanisms."

Vavi said the mass protest action planned for Monday will also be delayed.

Meanwhile, a ruling on whether the e-tolling of Gauteng's highways will go ahead next week will be handed down in the North Gauteng High Court on Saturday, despite this announcement.

If an interdict preventing e-tolling in Gauteng was granted, it could be in effect for the rest of the year, the High Court in Pretoria heard on Thursday.

"If the interdict is granted, in all legal reality, it must stand until the end of litigation, which would not be set to end any time soon ... maybe until the end of the year," said treasury lawyer Jeremy Gauntlett.

[I heard that name before. He was the lawyer who was lying on behalf of Mike Campbell and Ben Freeth, in Mugabe And The White African. So the lawyer for the Freeths and Campbells is also a lawyer for the South African Treasury! - MrK]

This was due to the time required for the review, as well as further court hearings and appeals.

He said if the South African National Roads Agency Limited (Sanral) defaulted on one month of its payment, the government would have to pay its entire debt.

"It does not mean that government would not be able to meet it [the debt], it has to, but at what cost? For this country to sustain R20-billion in unbudgeted capital is a serious matter," Gauntlett said.

He said the government would have to neglect other social and economic obligations to pay off the debt.

"The milk has been spilt with regards to the roads, and people are using them. The issue now is how to pay for them. It has to be paid for. You can say you don't like it, but you can't say that it is irrational."

He said the previous four delays to the e-toll system had come at a "great cost". -- additional reporting by Sapa

Judges are not immuned to scrutiny – MalilaTIME PUBLISHED - Thursday, April 26, 2012, 7:07 pm

Attorney General Mumba Malila says gone is the era when Judges were above scrutiny.

Speaking when he officiated at the Law Association of Zambia Conference in Livingstone today, Mr Malila says the present era demands that the doings of the Judiciary should be publicly scrutinized and discussed almost as frequently and with as much venom as those of politicians.

Mr Malila says for judicial independence to be meaningfully nurtured and protected by all, it must be counter-balanced by judicial accountability.He adds that judicial independence does not mean Judges are an elitist group, untouchables, and not subject to accountability.

He says to the contrary judicial independence is also about transparency and accountability.

Mr Malila further states that judicial institutional accountability requires that the judiciary is held in high esteem by the public.

He says this respect cannot be demanded but must be earned.

The Attorney General also reminded Lawyers that they have an obligation not only to protect judicial independence, but also to ensure that the public understands, respects and supports the principles.

He adds that Lawyers should not relent in letting the general public know that courts exist to serve their justice needs, and assure them that a strong independent and accountable judiciary is for their own good.

It is important in life to be clear about things, to be well informed about things. It is not possible for an individual to live a meaningful life in a state of ignorance. It is also not possible for a nation to develop and be governed well if its citizens are ignorant.

To develop, a nation needs well-informed citizens. Any nation that hopes to develop with ignorant citizens is hoping for the impossible because no nation in this world has ever developed without an informed citizenry.It is not possible for a country to be governed well if the great majority of its citizens are ignorant. The most potent weapon against misgovernment is an uninformed citizenry.

Ignorant citizens are easily manipulated and are even sometimes made to act against their own interests. Abuses are easily carried out in a nation dominated by ignorant citizens. It is easy to neglect ignorant people. It is not easy to mistreat well-informed people. Even things like ethnic conflicts are easily perpetrated in nations dominated by ignorant people.

It is very easy to mislead the ignorant and set them against another humble section of the population. Ignorance is dangerous. And any nation that wants to make progress has to ensure that its citizens are first well-informed. Where there is ignorance, corruption and other abuses thrive. Ignorant people cannot fully take their destiny into their own hands. Ignorant citizens can easily be misled to think that the resources of their country belong to their political leaders. In this way, corruption thrives. Corruption easily thrives in nations with very high levels of ignorance.

To develop, we have to first ensure that ignorance is dealt with. To stamp out corruption, we have to first ensure that our people are well-informed about the dangers and evils of corruption and as well as about everything else. Even diseases are impossible to combat in any state of ignorance. It is a big challenge to carry out health programmes in communities where levels of ignorance are very high. It is not easy to teach ignorant people even basic hygiene.

Ignorant citizens cannot be expected to hold their leaders accountable. To hold the political leadership of a country accountable, the citizens must first be well-informed. Sometimes ignorant people do things that are harmful to themselves; they can be a danger onto themselves. Ignorant people can easily be made to work against their own interests.

It is very comforting that some key leaders of our government recognise this fact. The assurance by Given Lubinda, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, that top among the government's priorities is awareness creation. This is indeed a priority issue. Everything should start here. New awareness is needed and that awareness has to be built by the leadership of our country.

If the leadership does not build the necessary awareness among our people, it will fail to communicate its programmes to them. Development programmes will not be understood by the people and people can only meaningfully support that which they understand.

Many government programmes have failed because of lack of awareness among the people they are intended to serve. Schools and health facilities have been vandalised by ignorant people in some parts of our country.

And Given is right when he says that corrupt elements capitalise on the lack of knowledge on the part of the people. Ignorant people cannot realise that what is being abused is theirs, belongs to them. In that way, corrupt politicians take advantage of their ignorance and treat government resources as if they were their own.

Truly, corruption and abuse of human rights thrive in an environment of ignorance. We have seen ignorant people made to defend politicians who have stolen from them when they are being pursued. We have seen ignorant people being mobilised to go to court and give support to corrupt politicians when they are being prosecuted.

It is therefore very important for the government to ensure that citizens are adequately informed on all matters that affect them. There is need to ensure that our people are educated about their rights and duties. Citizens have duties to perform. If they are ignorant about them, they will not perform well.For instance, every citizen has a duty to vote when time for voting comes.

Ignorant citizens don't vote. Citizens have a duty to participate in the governance of their country by taking active roles in the activities of their political parties and by trying to hold their political leaders accountable.Ignorant citizens cannot meaningfully participate in the governance of their country and are equally incapable of holding their leaders accountable.

Citizens have a duty to protect the environment. Ignorant citizens sometimes destroy the environment on which they depend out of lack of awareness. Most of the diseases affecting our people today are out of ignorance; with a bit of awareness, some of the diseases people experience would be easily wiped out.

The misgovernment that our country has experienced from time to time would be a thing of the past if the great majority of our people were fully aware of their rights and duties. Some of the things our politicians have gotten away with, they wouldn't get away with if our people were well-informed or were aware of what should or shouldn't be done.

It is therefore very important that special attention is paid by the government and indeed by all our political parties to educate our people and make them aware of their rights and duties so that they can become better citizens. Democracy cannot thrive in ignorance; misgovernment and abuses thrive in ignorance. We need to spend more time and resources in efforts to enlighten our people, to make them aware of their rights and duties.

Ignorance is dangerous for the individual and for the nation as a whole. An ignorant citizen is not only a danger to himself or herself but also to the whole nation. Let's do everything possible to increase the awareness and enlightenment of our people.

Development is impossible without awareness. Ignorance is an impediment on development. Poverty can be said to be an offshoot of ignorance. Diseases are sometimes spread by ignorance. Getting rid of ignorance can help us get rid of many other vices that depend or thrive on it.

POLICE yesterday swooped on Professor Geoffrey Lungwan-gwa's farmhouse in Lusaka West in search of guns. The search, which lasted three and a half hours, began at 13: 00 hours.

During a check at his farmhouse around 15:00 hours, The Post found about 10 plain-clothed police officers with Prof Lungwangwa, who is former transport minister and current MMD member of parliament for Nalikwanda, and his lawyer Maureen Simulele of CL Mundia and Company.Upon seeing journalists, police officers immediately ordered the workers to close the gate and keep the journalists away.

Later in an interview, Lungwangwa who spoke through his lawyer Simulele said the police officers had a search warrant for illegal firearms and other related materials.

"The police did come through at one o'clock with a search warrant which stated they were searching for items concealed in the premises of Prof Lungwangwa, illegal possession of firearms and other related materials. They have however left a statement saying they have not found anything," Simulele said.

And when contacted for a comment, police spokesperson Elizabeth Kanjela confirmed a search had been conducted but that she could not give any details by press time.

Later, Kanjela said they searched on allegations that Prof Lungwangwa had received and was in possession of firearms.

CHIEF Chisunka of Luapula Province says Rupiah Banda's libel suit will afford the nation an opportunity to know who stole from them. Former president Banda has sued chief Chisunka, claiming damages for defamation and libel over two articles that were published in The Post alleging that he had stolen a lot of money.

In an interview, Chisunka confirmed receiving the summons from former president Banda's lawyers Messrs Central Chambers saying he had handed over the case to his lawyers Nchito and Nchito. Chief Chisunka also thanked Post editor-in-chief Fred M'membe for joining his defence team."I am very grateful that Mr Fred M'membe has decided to join my subjects as defence lawyer," said chief Chisunka.

Chief Chisunka said tradition didn't allow chiefs to appear in court and would therefore let his subjects fight for him.

"Where we come from, chiefs don't fight with their subjects. I don't know where ba Rupiah comes from, maybe they do that. So I have also now handed over the matter to my subjects. Those are the ones who are going to deal with it. We also have people where we come from, and I; as a chief, cannot go and start standing with somebody in court. So I have handed over the matter to my subjects Nchito and Nchito, my subjects who are also lawyers," chief Chisunka said.

"These people (lawyers) are from my land. Maybe Rupiah where he comes from, they fight with chiefs but where we come from we don't fight with chiefs so I have told my subjects to represent me."

He said Banda's lawyers should henceforth address all the correspondence to his subjects and not him.

Chief Chisunka said he was a traditional leader who had the mandate of his subject to improve their livelihood and not a politician who would desert the people.

"Rupiah hates me because I refused to distribute the corruptly obtained maize to my subjects just days before the September 20 general election, that's all. I told him I can't do that. If you want to distribute the maize, wait until after the elections so that's why he hates me," said chief Chisunka.

PRESIDENT Michael Sata has directed Secretary to the Cabinet Evans Chibiliti to ensure that PF secretary general Wynter Kabimba is acknowledged immediately after Vice-President Guy Scott at all state functions.

The directive was issued in a letter dated April 10, 2012 addressed to Chibiliti and copied to ministers and permanent secretaries and has since been copied and communicated to all relevant government ministries and departments for immediate implementation.And sources said the clarification in the protocol, however, does not mean Kabimba has assumed any position in government or that he would sit in Cabinet meetings.

"Re: ORDER OF THE PROTOCOL AT STATE FUNCTIONS: I am in receipt of a copy of the letter by the secretary general (PF) dated 13th March, 2012, regarding the above matter," the letter directed to Kabimba and Chibiliti reads in part.

"I totally share the concerns and anxieties as expressed by the secretary general in his letter and hereby direct that your office takes them into serious consideration and acts upon them in conjunction with other relevant officers immediately."

President Sata stated that: "For avoidance of any doubt, the protocol at state functions shall now be as prescribed below: 1. His honour the Vice-President. 2. The secretary general (PF). 3. His lordship the Chief Justice. 4. The RT. Hon Mr Speaker of the National Assembly. 5. Members of the Central Committee . 6. Cabinet ministers. 7. His worship the Mayor. 8. Deputy ministers. 9. Members of Parliament…."

President Sata further added that if present at any particular function, the first lady shall be acknowledged immediately after him.

According to sources, the directive was prompted by the disorderly manner in which sitting arrangements of the party secretary general at state functions and other protocol-related matters were handled by staff in charge of protocol at State House, which Kabimba addressed in a letter to Chibiliti, that was also copied to President Sata.

And Chibiliti, in a letter addressed to permanent secretary for Administration at Cabinet Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tourism permanent secretary and Kabimba, said he had noted the need for the government to work together with the political leadership on their relationship with members of the diplomatic corps.

"It has been noted that it will be important for government to work together with your office to sensitise government and political leadership on their relationship with members of the Diplomatic Corps. It has been noted that government and political leadership are easily accessible by the members of the diplomatic Corp without the involvement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tourism," he stated.

"This is contrary to the international norms as provided in the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic and Consular Relations, and National Protocol guidelines."Chibiliti stated that the provisions were aimed at ensuring sovereignty and security of a country.

"It has therefore been agreed that this matter will be presented to Cabinet. However, there is need for my office to work together with the party to sensitise the political leadership in this respect," stated Chibiliti.

JUSTICE Ireen Mambilima is a national hero by the way she conductedlast year's polls, says United States ambassador to Zambia MarkStorella.

Ambassador Storella said Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) chairperson Justice Mambilima stuck to what she believed in during the elections.He said Zambians should look to themselves instead of others as areason for their successes."You have an Electoral Commission that has a strong ability to hold elections. But let's face it, every single time is a challenge,"

Ambassador Storella said when he addressed students from the University of Zambia and National Institute of Public Administration on constitution reforms at the US Embassy on Tuesday.

"I think that the Electoral Commission chairperson Justice Mambilima is a national hero to me. She was tough, tough, tough....and she set down rules about how things would go and she would not listen to anybody about breaking the rules. Not to the political parties and not even the United Nations.

She stuck by what she believed in and that made the process very strong."Ambassador Storella made the remarks after he was asked by a Post photojournalist whether he played a role in convincing former president Rupiah Banda to concede defeat.

Ambassador Storella said there had been "a lot speculation and rumours" that had gone round, including rumours of the US having a military base here and missiles.

Ambassador Storella said Zambians should not look to others for reasons for their successes, but to themselves.

He praised the role played by the media and other democratic institutions."Your press played a better role than you think. There was information available to the voters. The Post newspaper of course is an independent newspaper, but I was very impressed by the role of radio stations they presented the news, you will excuse me for saying this, often in a better way than The Post, much more in an unbiased way," he said adding.

"How many of you want to listen to Radio Phoenix, or Q FM not to mention all those community radio stations all over the country that were saying what they wanted to say to the Zambian people? I think that the institutions that have been built into your political process, per se, I think showed real strength. Look at the role of your churches, they would cooperate amongst themselves and press hard for non-violent elections."

Ambassador Storella said Dr Kenneth Kaunda set a good precedent for conceding defeat in 1991 and that former president Rupiah Banda did the right thing to emulate him.

And Ambassador Storella encouraged young people to get involved in the ongoing constitution reform process.He urged the people formulating the new constitution to have futuristic approach and think about the youth.

Ambassador Storella said his government stood ready to support a transparent constitution process that would accord chance to every Zambian to participate.He said for the process to succeed where others have failed, it must be inclusive, and it was important that young people learnt about the process and understood the issue at hand.

THE Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) has decided to tighten its monitoring mechanism after the arrest of an MTN Zambia IT specialist who allegedly manipulated the system to make his girlfriend win K1 billion as grand prize money.

CCPC public relations officer Vaida Bunda said in a statement yesterday that the Commission's executive director Chilufya Sampa was saddened that despite numerous strides made to urge business houses to consider consumers first, most firms still had loopholes in their systems which make it easy for consumers to lose out."The Commission has noted with regret that there appears to be loopholes in some of these competitions that are being run in the country. We have therefore decided that the best possible way of curtailing some of the loopholes is by having compliance programmes with such companies where the Commission will have to go through the operations of the competition before it starts running" stated the CCPC.

The CCPC further stated that in future, it shall require all companies running competitions to submit the rules, conditions and operations of the specific competitions before making them public to ensure that consumers were adequately protected from unfair practices.

"The CCPC has noted that while most of these competitions are initiated in good faith, business houses should always go a step further to ensure that all monitoring mechanisms are in place and if possible employees that are directly involved are cautioned and made to sign agreements," it stated.

"The Commission would also like to urge the general public to refrain from engaging in activities that might jeopardise other people's chances of genuinely winning competitions."

He said the manner in which some promotions were done lacked transparency and accountability.

"Some promotions, they indeed raise some questions. People want to know how they are done. In the interest of accountability and transparency they should be a way for the public to know how it (promotion) is being done. Implications are that people become scared to participate in promotions and will be very reserved because they don't want to lose their money," Moono said.

Jones Ilukena an IT specialist at MTN has been arrested for allegedly manipulating the system to make Namuchana Sinuma of Livingstone win the "Let's Go BEEG" K1 billion prize money.

ZAMBIA President Michael Sata declared it was “good to be back home” as he arrived in Harare Wednesday for a state visit during which he will also officially open this year’s Zimbabwe International Trade Fair (ZITF) in Bulawayo.

President Sata was greeted by a 21-gun salute when he landed at Harare International Airport aboard the challenger for a three-day state visit to Zimbabwe. President Sata, accompanied by First Lady Christine Kaseba, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Tourism Given Lubinda and other senior Government officials, was welcomed by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace.Others who were at the airport to receive President Sata and his delegation were Zimbabwean Vice-President Joyce Mujuru, Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and Zambian High Commissioner to Zimbabwe Ndiyoyi Mutiti.

President Sata also inspected a guard of honour mounted by the Zimbabwean army before he left the airport in the company of President Mugabe.

“I am certain that this visit will afford our two countries yet another opportunity to interact and further consolidate the excellent relations that we enjoy,” Sata said at a state dinner hosted for him by President Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe said the two countries were like siamese twins adding Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle would have been harder without the support of its northern neighbour and the rest of the region.

“You suffered reprisals by the Smith regime because of the support you gave us. Lives were lost in Zambia because of your solidarity with our liberation struggle. In spite of all these actions by the settler regime, Zambia relentlessly supported our struggle,” he said.

“It is this assistance from Zambia and other Frontline States which enables us through the armed struggle to end settler colonialism and bring about independence in Zimbabwe.

“That we are inseparable can be traced back to the old times when our two people traded and shared the great Zambezi River. Then there was the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which left large numbers of our people on either side of our borders.

“To this day, we have Zambians who have chosen to make Zimbabwe their home, as well as Zimbabweans who have done the same in Zambia.”

The two countries share the premier Victoria Falls resort and are set to co-host the 20th General Assembly of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation next year.

In addition an agreement was recently concluded to develop the US$4 billion Batoka Gorge hydro-power station on their common border which – with a capacity to produce 1,650 megawatts of electricity – would help end Zimbabwe’s perennial power supply problems.

“As a matter of fact, this project is as important to our two countries as it is to the whole Southern Africa region which, as you know, is experiencing a critical power deficit.”

President Sata is today expected to visit Zimbabwe’s Heroes Acre where he will lay wreaths on the tomb of a soldier and then he will later visit the Zimbabwean Dairy Board and Tyrone Farm in Goromonzi, about 30 kilometres south-east of Harare.

President Michael Sata who is on a State visit to neighboring Zimbabwe yesterday together with his counterpart Robert Mugabe witnessed the signing of the MoU on co-operation to jointly construct a US$4 billion 1,650 megawatt hydro-power station at the Batoka Gorge. The two Memorandums of Understanding signed were of Co-operation in Tourism and Youth Development.

Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister Walter Mzembi and Youth Development, Indigenisation and Empowerment Minister Saviour Kasukuwere signed on behalf of Zimbabwe while Zambian Foreign Affairs and Tourism Minister Given Lubinda signed on behalf of Zambia.And Zimbabwe’s Herald Newspaper reports that speaking during a state banquette held in honour of President Sata, President Mugabe pledged Zimbabwe’s commitment to working with its Zambian counterparts in efforts to chart a successful future for the two countries.

President Mugabe described Zimbabwe and Zambia as Siamese twins, adding that the two countries are inseparable.

The Zimbabwean leader also hailed the signing of the MOU on co-operation to jointly construct a US$4 billion hydro-power station at Batoka Gorge, stating that such infrastructural projects are the enablers of real and sustainable economic development.

He said the project is as important to the two countries as it is to the whole Southern Africa region which is experiencing a critical power deficit.

And President Sata said Zambia and Zimbabwe’s relations, dating back to the pre-independence era, were founded on common traditions and cultural values.

He said Zambia could not celebrate its independence without the liberation of Zimbabwe.

Mr Sata said the signing of the two MoUs by the two governments would further enhance social and economic relations.

President Sata re-affirmed Zambia’s commitment to strengthening bilateral relations through increased economic co-operation in various areas, as identified by the Joint Permanent Commission of Co-operation.

The President Sata said since the two countries are landlocked, Zambia and Zimbabwe have made strides to make them land-linked through the Chirundu One-Stop-Border Post.

He said this had improved efforts towards trade facilitation particularly on the North-South Corridor and reducing costs on the route.

Mr Sata said the UNTWO General Assembly will shine the spotlight on Victoria Falls and Livingstone while showcasing the beauty and splendour of the Victoria Falls. President Sata said co-operation within the region was imperative.

Anglo gets rid of the weight on its shouldersJOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Apr 24 2012 11:27

Mining house Anglo American has sold the South African arm of steelmaker Scaw Metals for $440-million to an investment consortium in a long-awaited deal, bringing proceeds from its drive to divest non-core assets to $3.7-billion over two years.

The sale of Scaw South Africa, an integrated steelmaker which produces specialised components for mining, rail and other industrial sectors, was the last major element of a push to refocus Anglo on its core mining business.Tuesday's sale, to a group led by South Africa's government-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and including a consortium of black economic empowerment (BEE) investors, virtually completes that 2009 divestment plan.

Anglo's last significant outstanding deal is the exit from its Tarmac construction materials business through the joint venture between Tarmac UK and cement maker Lafarge, agreed in 2011 but currently on ice pending a decision from British regulators which could come as early as next week.

Stifling competition

Britain's Competition Commission said in February that the joint venture between Anglo and Lafarge would damage competition in the market for construction materials but the companies have said the regulator's worries can be "remedied".

Anglo had sold Scaw Metals' international business to Onesteel in December 2010 for $932-million.

The sale of Scaw South Africa, to the consortium which includes existing Scaw investors Izingwe Holdings, Shanduka Resources and the Southern Palace group of companies, brings the total proceeds from the Scaw Metals Group sale to $1.4-billion.

Analysts welcomed the deal as a positive one, with Liberum placing the total Scaw proceeds as equivalent to 6.6 times the 2010 core earnings, the last year of Scaw's full contribution.

Anglo shares were up 0.5% at 2 307 pence, in line with the broader UK mining sector.

Other non-core assets sold over the past two years include Anglo's zinc portfolio, sold to India-focused miner Vedanta, Tarmac's European business and undeveloped Australian coal assets. -- Reuters

ANC Youth League leaders have questioned the credibility and motives of the party's national disciplinary committee of appeals, chaired by Cyril Ramaphosa, after its decision to suspend the league's secretary general, Sindiso Magaqa, despite his withdrawal of his appeal.

Although the decision to uphold Malema's expulsion was widely expected, the appeal committee's decision to suspend Magaqa for a year has angered a number of youth league members.Some have pointed out that this was the clearest indication yet that the disciplinary process was politically motivated.

Youth league structures from different provinces indicated that they would defy the ANC's decision on Malema, spokesperson Floyd Shivambu and Magaqa.

Magaqa is regarded as Malema's closest ally in the youth league and as someone who would continue to champion his radical policy proposals and the call for leadership change in the ANC.

[You say radical, I say he is being conservative. - MrK]

During the league's Limpopo provincial conference last weekend, which Malema was barred from attending, Magaqa made a speech condemning the ANC leadership for the state of the party and for persecuting its youth leaders in a bid to silence them.

Since Malema's troubles with the ANC started, Magaqa has continued where Malema left off. Malema and Magaqa used to represent the youth league at ANC national executive committee meetings. His suspension has been interpreted by others as a strategy by the party to force the league to appoint an acting president and secretary general who will represent the league within the party's top structures.

In November last year, the ANC's national disciplinary committee found Magaqa guilty of bringing the party into disrepute for a statement he distributed on behalf of the youth league in which it said Botswana was a puppet regime and it would send a task team to the country. It also called the youth league's former president, Public Enterprises Minister Malusi Gigaba, a "government flower".

He was sentenced to a year's suspension, suspended for three years, and ordered to make a public apology to Gigaba.

On April 18, Magaqa's legal representatives submitted a letter to the appeals committee notifying it of his intention to withdraw a previous motion to appeal his sentence. The youth league felt it best that Magaqa did not appeal, because it suspected the party would then lobby for a heavier sentence. The league would then run the risk that two of its leaders would be left out in the cold.

Magaqa accepted his sentence, made a public apology and did not appeal. But Ramaphosa on Tuesday announced that the committee had rejected his withdrawal and his suspended sentence and that he would instead be suspended from the ANC for a period of one year. He will also forfeit his position as secretary general. The decision by the appeal committee was final, said Ramaphosa, even though Magaqa was not given an opportunity to defend his position not to appeal his sanction.

The appeal committee dismissed his withdrawal on the basis that:

# Magaqa's legal representatives did not furnish any evidence to it that the condition (an apology to Gigaba) had been complied with.However, Magaqa's legal representatives countered that the argument did not hold water because there were no preconditions, including that they provide proof of the apology to the appeal committee.

Furthermore, Magaqa's apology was widely reported on the youth league's website and was sent from the ANC's email address.

In addition, had the appeal committee requested evidence of the apology, they would have had no problem abiding by the request.

The appeal committee also said that it was of the view that:

# Magaqa was obliged to "seek and obtain the consent of the respondent [the ANC prosecution] to the withdrawal of the appeal, especially in light of the respondent's argument that the sentence handed to him was too lenient".

"The unilateral withdrawal of the appeal would defeat the achievement of justice and prejudice the respondent because, in the view of the [appeals committee], the intention of the second appellant [Magaqa] in withdrawing the appeal was to frustrate the respondent by precluding it from arguing for a possible increase in the sanction," said Ramaphosa.

However, the Mail & Guardian has learnt that Magaqa's legal representatives submitted a letter notifying the ANC prosecution of the withdrawal of the appeal, but the prosecution had not responded and had at no time expressed that it felt prejudiced by the withdrawal.

"And even if the defence had not notified the ANC about the intention to withdraw the appeal, how would the appeals committee know? This proves that the ANC prosecution and the appeals committee communicated, which they were not supposed to do," said one well-placed source.

# The appeals committee also argued that:

The last-minute withdrawal constituted an "abuse of process" and sought only to "prejudice" the ANC prosecution. "Finality of this matter and justice will not be achieved by [Magaqa's] conduct. Consequently, the national disciplinary committee of appeals, in its discretion and in the interest of justice, has decided not to allow the withdrawal of the appeal," said Ramaphosa.

Despite the setback, the league is planning to approach the party's national executive committee to review Ramaphosa's decision.

"We are busy compiling a report to be presented to the committee. We were shocked by the appeals committee's decision, especially on Magaqa. How do you rule on someone who did not appeal? He apologised. No one said he should apologise to the committee. It did not give him a formula of how he should apologise. He apologised publicly. Why pass judgment on him? That is a clear case of abuse of power.

"Now that they realise that dealing with Malema alone is not resolving their problem, they are going for Magaqa. If people have not seen this by now, I don't know," said a senior youth league leader, who was authorised to comment officially.

He said the disciplinary action against Magaqa was similar to that meted out to Shivambu.

"We are shocked that Floyd was given a straight suspension, despite the fact that he was a first offender. Why suspend him for three years while he is a first offender? Floyd is the only one the national disciplinary committee said showed remorse. Why did he not get a suspended sentence?"

A Shell oil spill in the Niger Delta was at least 60 times greater than the company reported at the time, according to unpublished documents obtained by Amnesty International.

According to Shell, the 2008 spill from a faulty weld on a pipeline resulted in 1640 barrels of oil being spilt near the town of Bodo in Ogoniland. The figure was based on an assessment agreed at the time by the company, the government oil spill agency, the Nigerian oil regulator and a representative of the community.But a previously unpublished assessment, carried out by independent United States oil spill consultancy firm Accufacts, suggests that between 103 000 barrels and 311 000 barrels of oil were flooding into the Bodo creeks every day for as long as 72 days following the leak. Accufacts arrived at the figure following analysis of video footage of the leak taken at the time by local people.

"The difference is staggering: even using the lower end of the Accufacts estimate, the volume of oil spilt at Bodo was more than 60 times the volume Shell has repeatedly claimed leaked," said Audrey Gaughran, director of global issues at Amnesty International.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

FORMER Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr Kombo Moyana is embroiled in an acrimonious land dispute with new farmers at Calgary Farm in Mazowe District. Farmers who benefited from the land reform programme at Calgary Farm between 2006 and 2008 allege that Dr Moyana sold his farm (Utopia Farm) for residential stands and was now encroaching onto their farms.

They say Dr Moyana has already been given an offer letter in what they allege as double allocation of farms by officials from the Ministry of Lands, Land Reform and Rural Resettlement.Dr Moyana yesterday confirmed the development, but said it was his son Kombo (Junior) who was given the offer letter for Calgary Farm by Mashonaland Central Province Governor Martin Dinha.

“I am not the one who is involved in the issue. My son was given an offer letter for the area and these farmers do not have offer letters,” he said.

Dr Moyana said the farmers were resisting to move because Kombo (Junior) was from Manicaland Province.

“The issue is not about farming but area of origin. Is it Government’s policy that someone from Manicaland should not have a farm in Mashonaland?

“These people do not want anyone from another province in their area. Is this what we fought for?” he asked.

On the issue of selling part of his farm for residential stands, Dr Moyana said: “I was ordered by Harare City Council to stop farming and currently I do not have any farming land.”

Disgruntled farmers said Dr Moyana is grazing his cattle at some of their plots and has told them to vacate claiming to be the new owner.

One of the affected farmers, Mr Prince Danda, said although he had not received an eviction order officially, Dr Moyana had indicated that he was expanding his Utopia Farm into his plot, subdivision 9 of Calgary Farm.

Mr Danda was given an offer letter signed by the then Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement in the President’s Office, Cde Didymus Mutasa, in 2008.

“I’m surprised that Dr Moyana was given an offer letter for an occupied piece of land that is under production. How can the land be double allocated? He has vast swathes of land, and this is the only land I have,” he said.

Mr Danda said he is into livestock production, specialising in developing breeding stock for the beef industry, sheep and goats.

“I have nowhere to go and my project is in jeopardy.

“I have invested lots of money and now I cannot even plan anything as I can be displaced from this area any day,” he said.

“We were surprised when we were told that the land was no longer ours and it was now owned by Dr Moyana since some of us were given offer letters in 2006.

“I am doing a project of cross-breeding cows and so far I have pumped out more than US$50 000,” said Mr Danda.

Some of the farmers said it was unfair for Dr Moyana to occupy their farms when they were producing food while he wanted to develop residential stands.

“At least authorities should consider the activities being undertaken before removing people.

“We are producing food and this is prime land for farming. Why can’t the authorities give Dr Moyana (land for) residential stands from other areas where there are no farming activities taking place?” said another farmer.

Mr Martin Sibindi, who is also affected, said officials in Mashonaland Central Province told him that the land will be resubdivided.

Mr Sibindi got his offer letter in 2008.

“I am left with nothing. I received my offer letter in 2008 and to my surprise I am told that I now don’t have anything.

“This is not fair since the land is being given to one person who already has a very big piece of land.”

Mr Sibindi said he is into wildlife farming and eviction means he will lose everything he has worked for since 2009.

Mr Norbert Mutasa and Admire Chokuvamba, who got their offer letters in 2008, could not be reached for comment.

Dr Moyana refused to reveal his son’s contact details and the offer letter for the land, referring all questions to Governor Dinha.

Mashonaland Central chief lands officer Mr Gerald Chirapa said: “I do not want to talk to the media and as for that issue, I do not want to say anything. Why don’t you talk to the Governor?”

Governor Dinha yesterday confirmed there was a dispute over ownership of the farm.He said the provincial lands committee recommended that more people be resettled on Calgary Farm, among them white farmer Georgina Brown and Kombo Moyana (Junior).

Governor Dinha said this was when the dispute started as the other beneficiaries wanted to block the entry of the new farmers.

According to documents shown to The Herald yesterday, Kombo Moyana Junior’s offer letter was dated 21 January 2012 and signed by Minister Herbert Murerwa.

“After a long dispute with old farmers resisting the coming in of these people (Brown and Moyana) the provincial taskforce on land investigated the matter and resolved that all the people including Moyana and Brown be accommodated at the farm.

“We have called the concerned parties more than four times to solve the issue. These people are now bringing tribal issues but our position is everyone has the right to land. Land is not a status symbol, those given land should use it. People should not complain when untilised land is being taken,” he said.

"Some even believe we are (...) conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." David Rockefeller, Memoirs